JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ART THERAPY ASSOCIATION

VOLUME 26, NUMBER 4, 2009www.arttherapyjournal.org

VOLUME 26 NUMBER 4, 2009

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ART THERAPY ASSOCIATION

E ditorialThe Art of Liberation: Carrying Forward an Artistic Legacy for Art Therapy — Lynn Kapitan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150

A rticlesAesthetic Empathy in Teaching Art to Children: The Work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in Terezin — Linney Wix . . . . . . .152

Artistic Sensibility in the Studio and Gallery Model: Revisiting Process and Product — Geoffrey Thompson . . . . . .159

Art Therapy Applications of Dolls in Grief Recovery, Identity, and Community Service— Holly Feen-Calligan, Barbara McIntyre, and Margaret Sands-Goldstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167

Identifying Children and Adolescents With Depression: Review of the Stimulus Drawing Task andDraw A Story Research — Rawley Silver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174

Brief ReportForm, Content, and Gender Differences in Lego® Block Creations by Japanese Adolescents— Daiki Kato and Miyako Morita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181

V iewpointArt Therapy and Autism: Overview and Recommendations — Nicole Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187

R eviewsVIDEO REVIEW

Writer of O by Pola Rapaport — Reviewed by Mia de Bethune . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191

BOOK REVIEWS

Art Therapy and Clinical Neuroscience edited by Noah Hass-Cohen and Richard Carr— Reviewed by Christopher Belkofer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192

Whole Person Healthcare: Volume 3. The Arts and Health edited by Ilene Ava Serlin, Jill Sonke-Henderson,Rusti Brandman, and John Graham-Pole — Reviewed by Lori Mackey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .194

About the Cover: “The Red Flower” is an ink drawing on paper (11" x 17") by Rachel Mosler, MPS, ATR, an artist andart therapist for ACI, a holistic rehabilitation center for adults in New York City. Her most recent art exhibition was asolo show at AHN/VHS Gallery in Philadelphia. She writes, “Water crystals, indicative of traditional Tibetan mandalaforms, are referenced in this drawing to explore more deeply the interconnectedness of art, psychology, and science.The drawing served as a method to process my work with individuals who were unknown, forgotten, or had beensubjugated by society.” To view more of Rachel’s artwork, visit her website at www.rachelmosler.com

Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 26(4) pp. 150-151 © AATA, Inc. 2009

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The Art of Liberation: Carrying Forward an ArtisticLegacy for Art Therapy

Lynn Kapitan, Editor

Editorial

Art as a force that contributes to freedom from oppres-sion—what a hopeful message for art therapists today!Although art alone cannot transform injustice, the experi-ence of art plays a powerful role in shaping consciousnessand freeing the life force. Survivors of the Nazi concentra-tion camp at Terezin found life and freedom with their artteacher Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, whose historical influenceon art therapy is recounted in this issue by Linney Wix.From the horrors of their confinement, we can only imag-ine the ill-fated children gazing out a window with Dicker-Brandeis and contemplating the distant mountains. “Look,children! Look at how beautiful they are!” one survivorrecalled her saying (Myer & Myer, n.d.). “Behind thosemountains is freedom…”

And so they saw what she saw, and opened themselvesto the beauty of the flowers she placed before them to drawor marveled with pleasure at a postcard of an old master-piece their teacher showed them that had life in it still. Thechildren learned to observe and to draw with sensitivity allthat the art encounter awakened in them. Art was notmerely a diversion from the brutality of their daily lives butwas an act of liberating their feelings and confronting theirexperiences. Art strengthened the children of Terezin byhelping them access their own images, perceptions, and ex -per i ences—something that the oppressor could never robfrom them.

The Art of Liberation

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis’s artistic legacy lives on todayin the experiences of countless people who turn to theemancipatory spirit of art against that which stifles andoppresses them in body, mind, and spirit. Artistic practicecarries them beyond the narrow confines of life to a feel-ing of connection with all others who are struggling, lov-ing, and breathing just as they are. Studying a photographin art therapy, an elderly woman breathes life into thememory of her long departed husband. Vivid red graffiticonveys a youth’s passion or anger, the imprint of an iden-tity, or the graphic reminder of blood spilled on the side-walk. A child makes a discovery one day when she climbsup a narrow ladder into a gnarly thicket of branches heav-ily laden with sun-ripened apples. Forever after her per-

ception of how to “draw a person picking an apple from atree” is revised and transformed.

We learn about the world solely through our percep-tions but for these to be authentic we must first rid our-selves of ideas that distort them. Whatever the reasons forconfinement, a captive is locked in and the world is lockedout, locked away, and ultimately shut down. Any potentialwithin that person lies dormant. The tool of release ishuman touch or empathy, a life-giving imperative thatDicker-Brandeis brought to her students from her owntraining in aesthetics. To appreciate a work of art, the bar-riers that separate the observer from the work must becrossed. Empathy is a matter of “gliding one’s feeling into”the dynamic structure of the object of contemplation usingthe perceptions of one’s own muscles (Buber, 1947, p. 96).Likewise, to see the truth of love as Dicker-Brandeis did,we must be free of the imprisoning processes that separateor destroy human life and disintegrate the world around us(Krishnamurti, 1993).

The art of liberation arises from the imagination’sstruggle against the forces of fear and ignorance thatenslave us. Throughout history, this struggle has been “oneof the leading political processes that push forward the lib-eration of the human spirit by rescuing and creating newterritories of freedom” (Escobar, 1990, p. 86). All over theworld today artists are using the tools of empathetic imag-ination and global communication to witness the strugglefor justice. Artists Against Apartheid, an internationalalliance committed to equal rights, sponsors art events forchildren living in Gaza who are recovering from the trau-ma of last year’s 23-day assault on their refuge camp home.“We are humans just like you” is the message of solidaritybehind the “Longest Letter”—a 2625 meter section of theSeparation Wall in Palestine that is being transformed withpainted messages from around the world to strengthenhope for those trapped within its borders. The Combat ArtProject, featured on the website of the International ArtTherapy Organization, invites veterans of war to reclaimtheir uniforms through papermaking and turn them intoworks of art. And there are thousands more: Artists AgainstRacism, Youth Art Connection, Taking IT Global, Art forAIDS International, freeDimensional, Apathy is Boring,

KAPITAN

Arts Against the War, as well as Art Without Borders,Artists Without Borders, Art Therapy Without Borders—we are witnessing a global revolution of the art spirit that isstriving to be free.

The Changing Borders of Art andArt Therapy

Art is moving beyond the narrow confines of institu-tional health care as well. We are seeing a cultural shift takeplace as more people are replacing formal health care withhealth-promoting alternatives in new locations and envi-ronments. They may be sensing an interpersonal void inprofessional medicine, which out of economic necessityprioritizes the needs of large populations and tends to treatpatients as objects. The restrictions placed on formal healthcare can mirror the psychology of captivity, producing bar-riers to empathy and a desire to medicate or numb percep-tual awareness, to forget, to look but not see. In an effortto preserve the humanistic core of health care, in this issue,Geoffrey Thompson describes the “gallery model” of arttherapy that embraces patients as artists and reframes thetypical roles, identities, and self-defining experiences of thepsychiatric hospital within which the gallery is located.Thompson argues for the cultivation of an artistic sensibil-ity in patients and art therapists that echoes the artisticlegacy of Dicker-Brandeis, with his assertion that “art pro-vides perceptual freedom and engages the whole personin…pursuing beauty” (p. 160).

The liberating meditation that is art promotes anempathetic relationship between the self and inner andouter realities seeking validation. Art demands this intro-spection and often, as well, a confrontation with the veryexistence of the self. Thus it is no surprise that adversity canfree the imagination, for surely artistic freedom begins withthe freedom to claim and experience our identities(Escobar, 1990, p. 92). Thompson makes this case for psy-chiatric patients whose identities are liberated in the galleryfrom the limiting confines of diagnoses. Holly Feen-Calligan and her coauthors in this issue trace the history ofdollmaking as a uniquely empathetic art form for strength-ening identity in the recovery from grief.

Whether drawing from the imagination or from care-ful observation, art making utilizes cognitive, perceptual,and emotional processes. Art therapists have long studiedhow these processes may be assessed and put to therapeu-tic uses. Another artistic legacy in art therapy is gatheredand presented in this issue with a retrospective review ofRawley Silver’s 40 years of research developing the Stim u -lus Drawing Task and Draw A Story assessments. Also inthis issue, Daiki Kato and Miyako Morita show us an ex -pansive world created by Japanese youth from Lego blockswithin the tiny confines of a 25 cm square of green plastic.

What Liberates Art Therapy Today?

People construct their life spaces through cultural andsocial milieus. Like any world we create, the art therapyworld can be colonized by oppressive, distorting influencesthat confine us to a small, narrow place. Thus it is excitingto witness this historical moment in art therapy today as thefield rapidly expands with the influx of global perspectives.New artistic legacies are being established with the creativeenergy arising in many venues such as the Art Peace Sus tain -ability interactive art event (www.youtube.com), the virtualnetworking of such art therapists as Cathy Malchiodi (www.internationalarttherapy.org) and Gretchen Miller (www.arttherapyalliance.org), the growing number of art therapistswho are blogging (go to www.arttherapyalliance.org/MemberWebsites.html to find such art therapy blogs as: PaintCut Paste, Art Heals, The Unfolding Moment, The Parent -ing Toolbox, The Healing Arts, Knowing Imagination, Cre -at ivity in Motion, and others), mentoring new professionals(www.americanarttherapyassociation.org), and establishingartistic and therapeutic websites (see in this issue NicoleMartin’s www.arttherapyandautism.com and Rachel Mosler’swww.rachelmosler.com). These and other socially aware arttherapists too numerous to mention are carrying an artisticlegacy forward in their visions of a less oppressive environ-ment in which to live and to heal.

In all stories of captivity, freedom is accomplished onlywhen the prisoner achieves a fundamental shift in the bal-ance of power. Dicker-Brandeis taught that people canhold fast to who they are by engaging artistically in therealities they have to endure (p. 154). In so doing, theythwart their oppressors by regaining their life space. Such ateacher or therapist understands the imperative of beingcreatively alive for one’s patients. The therapist’s own innerfreedom is the agent of hope transmitted to others. Howcan art therapists cultivate inner freedom if not throughthe em brace of transformative, creative power? What stopsus? What holds us in captivity? These questions are wellworth exploring as we reflect upon the messages of freedomtaking place artistically in the world today.

ReferencesBuber, M. (1947). Between man and man. London, England:

Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Escobar, E. (1990). Art of liberation: A vision of freedom. In M.O’Brien & C. Little (Eds.), Reimaging America: The arts ofsocial change (pp. 86–94). Philadelphia: New Society.

Krishnamurti, J. (1993). The way of peace. The Sun, 206, 12–13.(Original work published in 1948).

Myers, T. (Producer/writer), & Myers, M. (Director). (in produc-tion). Children of the model ghetto. [Motion picture]. (Availablefrom Here and Now, 516 South Runnymeade, Evansville, IL,47714).

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